Why You Shouldn't Lend A Bad Boy Your Clothes

by Philline Harms

  “Why do you?” I quietly asked. “Want me back after I hurt you, I mean.”

  Victoria shook her head and shut her eyes. “I don’t know. It’s…it’s so fucking wrong, but…somehow I think I still love you.”

  I suddenly couldn’t stand looking at her anymore and stared down at my hands instead, knuckles white with how hard I was clasping them together. Just for a few seconds, everything was quiet except for the distant hum of the music from the party downstairs. Eventually, I could hear Victoria taking a deep breath before she leaned closer again.

  “One kiss,” she said softly, her breath brushing my cheek. “Is that really too much to ask?”

  “I can’t.” My voice was nothing more than a whisper. It sounded shaky and weak, and I hated it so much I wanted to scream.

  “Alright,” she said in the same sweet tone, drawing back, “then I think I’m going to have to make a call.”

  My stomach revolted at the thought, nausea mixing with nerves, and before I realized it, I had a hand gripping onto her shirt and dragging her closer again. I silently counted to ten before I could finally say, “Do you promise not to tell Jules’s parents anything if I do this?”

  “At least, not anytime soon,” Victoria said with a nod.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll do it. One kiss and nothing more.”

  She nodded again, a small smile lighting up her face when she realized she won.

  I slowly leaned in, but inches before our lips could brush, I pulled back. “And you won’t tell anyone about this, okay? Not your friends, not anyone else at school, and especially not Jules,” I said, cursing myself for sounding so unsure and shaky.

  “Just stop thinking about him for a second,” Victoria said impatiently, shifting even closer. Her perfume tickled my nose, the familiar scent of vanilla. “Jules isn’t here. He’ll never know.”

  “He can’t.”

  An amused little glimmer in her eyes told me that she didn’t mind the idea of him finding out. “How do you think he would react? I’m sure he would be so sad…”

  The mere thought made me feel sick, so I just mindlessly repeated. “He can’t find out. Now stop talking and…just kiss me.”

  The words felt like acid in my mouth, but Victoria pushed me onto my back before I had the time to dwell on them. Her mouth was on mine within seconds, hot and demanding. I pressed my eyes shut and gripped tightly onto the sheets beneath me to keep myself from reaching out and pushing her off the bed.

  Everything about this felt wrong. I wanted the taste of coffee instead of strawberries, curls instead of silky, long hair, and edges where there were curves, and I was about to pull away when a choked little noise cut through the silence.

  Victoria didn’t seem to notice, but to me, the small sound seemed like a gunshot in the quiet. Turning my head, I searched for the source, only to find myself staring into the same eyes that had been on my mind this entire evening.

  Pressed into the mattress by Victoria’s weight, all I could utter was a weak “Fuck…Jules, it’s not—”

  He didn’t stick around to listen. He blinked, once, twice, then he turned and ran. I immediately tried to sit up, but there was nowhere to go with her body on top of mine.

  “Victoria, please,” I said, too far gone to even care that I was practically begging her. “I need to go after him. He—”

  Her lips were back on mine before I could finish my sentence, smothering me with another kiss. It took a few seconds and all of my strength, but eventually, I managed to break the kiss and roll us around so that I was on top of her.

  Victoria blinked up at me in surprise as she found herself pinned to the bed. “What are you—”

  “I have to get out of here,” I said through gritted teeth, sinking my nails into the palms of my hands to stop my anger from boiling over. “And if what you say is true, you’ll let me. If you really love me, you will understand that I can’t do this. You got your kiss. I did what you wanted. Now you have to let me go and keep your promise to not tell his parents.”

  The surprise in her eyes gave way to the ice-cold calculation. “Alright. Under one condition.”

  “What is it?” I demanded.

  “This won’t be the last time you met me.”

  I stared down at her in disbelief. “Victoria, I’m not fucking doing this again.”

  “I don’t really think you have a choice,” she answered with a frosty smile, reminding me that even though she was beneath me, she still had the upper hand in the grand scheme of things.

  I wanted to wipe that smile off her face, but I knew that that would only make things worse.

  It was the thought of Jules, who was probably getting farther and farther away with every second that hastily made me say, “Alright, fine. But no kissing, no nothing. Never again.”

  I pushed myself off the bed before she could reply and immediately stormed out of the room. In my hurry, I almost crashed into a bunch of people on the stairs, but I didn’t care. I didn’t stop and simply rushed on until I reached the living room.

  My heart sank when I couldn’t spot Jules anywhere.

  “Hey, Hunter,” a voice somewhere besides me said.

  I started to walk without turning around. “Not now. I need to get out of here.”

  “Why?”

  When I didn’t slow down, a hand clasped my sleeve and forced me to turn around. Adam stared down at me with a raised brow. “What’s going on? Did something happen?”

  “Jules…” I began, breaking off after just that one word. I took a deep breath to keep the helpless sense of panic from bubbling over. “Do you know where he is? Did you see him anywhere?”

  The look on Adam’s face morphed from slightly irritated to definitely worried. “I last saw him maybe fifteen minutes ago? Or twenty. I don’t know. Why?”

  Twenty minutes. So he didn’t go and join the others again. He left, alone, and if something happened to him, it was my fucking fault.

  “I need to find him,” I said, offering no explanation and finally wrestling my arm out of Adam’s grip.

  He stared at me for a few more seconds, then he just nodded. “Okay. I’ll search the city center. You take the main road.”

  “I—Really?” I asked. “Shit, thank you. Call me if you see him, yeah?”

  “Of course,” Adam said. Before he turned around, he reached for my arm once more, this time to lightly squeeze my shoulder. “I’m sure we’ll find him. He can’t have gotten far.”

  I nodded silently, then I followed him towards the front door, pushing through the crowd of moving bodies.

  By the time I reached my car, Adam’s was already gone. My fingers were trembling when I fished my keys out of my pocket and unlocked the car. Since Jules had walked in on us about thirty minutes ago, he shouldn’t be too far away if he was on foot. I tried to cling to that thought as I got into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

  It had started to rain while I was inside, the downpour blurring my vision through the windshield, the pattering of the raindrops mixing with the noise of my shaky breath. The knowledge that Jules was probably out there somewhere, drenched and cold and alone was enough to make me floor it as I took one of the roads leading to our neighborhood.

  The streetlights around here were sparse, so it was almost impossible to make out anything besides the road. After a few moments, I started looking for a place to turn and drive back to see if I missed something when I suddenly glimpsed a hunched figure sitting at the side of the road.

  I immediately slammed my foot down on the brake, grateful that there were no cars behind me. The car rocked to a stop with screeching tires, but he didn’t look up. I swallowed hard and pulled out my phone to quickly text Adam. Then I finally got out of the car and quietly went to him.

  Jules was sitting with his elbows resting on his knees and his head in his hands. Next to him, something was glistening in the faint glow of the streetlights down the road. Only after a second glance, I realized that it was a bottle
of vodka.

  Gathering all my strength, I carefully asked, “Jules?”

  He didn’t react nor gave any indication if he even noticed me.

  I stood there, feeling raindrops trailing down my neck and my heart beating out of my chest with fear. There was nothing I could say, so I silently sunk onto the curb next to him, careful not to move too close.

  For what felt like an eternity, the only sound in my ears was the rain, so quiet that I flinched when Jules suddenly spoke. “If you’ve come to tell me that it wasn’t what it looked like, you can save your breath.”

  “Jules, please,” I whispered.

  I didn’t even know what I was begging for. Not forgiveness because that was something that I did not even have for myself. Understanding, perhaps, seeing as it was all that I could still hope for from him.

  “It…it wasn’t like that. I didn’t—”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” Jules said. His voice was strangely monotone, and when he finally looked up, his blue eyes looked like they were frozen over, cold and hard, devoid of any emotion. “See, I understand you. You are with someone, and then you grow bored, so you drop them. I don’t know what made me think that this was any different.”

  When I opened my mouth again, I sounded desperate and choked up. “It was different. It is. I…This is so different than anything I’ve ever felt and I…God. I fucking ruined everything. I’m so sorry.”

  Jules remained completely silent. In the dull glow of the streetlights, he looked like a stranger, not like the boy who had been nestled against my chest. He was a picture in black and white, harsh shadows turning his face into something alien. Drops of rain clung to his eyelashes and trailed down his cheeks. It almost looked like he was crying.

  I couldn’t hold his gaze for long.

  “She told me she would call your parents and I didn’t…I didn’t know what to do,” I whispered, so quietly I couldn’t even be sure he heard me. I was feeling sick to my stomach, still feeling the phantom touch of her lips on mine. “I didn’t want to kiss her, but I was so scared, and then I did it, and it was so wrong, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I never wanted to lose this and then I—”

  I couldn’t finish my sentence because I suddenly doubled over, pressing my hands onto the wet concrete. My entire body was shaking as I started to dry-heave and wave after wave of nausea crashed over me. I kissed Victoria. I kissed Victoria, and I could still taste her lip gloss, and Jules thought I didn’t love him, and I ruined everything. I lost him, and it was all my fault, and I couldn’t stop shaking. My ears were ringing, and my teeth were chattering, and it was all my fault, and I was sorry. I was sorry.

  “Hunter.”

  Jules voice was soft and sounded a million years away, barely reaching me as I started to tremble even more.

  “I’m sorry.” I panted, gasping for air. “I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have—”

  “Hunter.” He repeated, firmer this time, and I flinched when I could feel his hand settling onto my shoulder. “Breathe.”

  I tried, but there seemed to be not enough oxygen and everything started to get a bit hazy and dark around the edges until I suddenly felt his arms around me. My hands instinctively came up to hold onto Jules’s arm like it was some kind of anchor. My lungs screamed for air, and I tried, tried to breathe in and out, evenly and calmly, and when I couldn’t, a quiet sob that I at first didn’t realize was mine pierced through the silence.

  “Shh, just breathe. In and out. In and out. Just…just keep breathing,” Jules murmured.

  I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or if he sounded choked up as well, but it didn’t matter as he moved a hand to the back of my head and let me rest my forehead against his shoulder. He was trembling, too, but his breathing was even. After a moment, I tried to inhale and exhale in time with him. In and out. In and out. In and out until I was no longer hyperventilating and the world stopped spinning all around me.

  “Okay?” Jules asked hesitantly once he noticed I had calmed down, and I only felt even more miserable when I realized that he was the one holding me even though I was guilty and even though I cheated and didn’t deserve any of this.

  “Yes,” I whispered and finally mustered the strength to pull away, immediately feeling a hundred times colder without his arms around me.

  A few feet away, a car drove past us, then the deafening silence returned. I couldn’t look Jules in the eye out of fear of what I would see in them.

  When he eventually spoke, each word sounded like a punch to the face.

  “I can’t forgive you.”

  I had no right to expect anything else, so I only nodded, feeling my eyes burning.

  Jules quickly added, “At least not yet. I…I need some time, I think.”

  “Okay.” I rasped, forcing myself to nod.

  “Just…”

  From the corner of my eye, I could see him running a hand over his face, looking tired and exhausted and so bitter it made something deep inside my chest ache. My heart skipped a beat when he suddenly turned his head and met my eyes.

  “I just need you to know that I understand that you didn’t want to do it. It’s not all your fault. This entire situation is completely fucked up, and there’s just nothing we can really do about it.”

  My throat tightened at his words. “I wish we could get you out of there,” I muttered. “You know, have you live with me, or get you your own place. Just anywhere, except for your parents’ house.”

  Jules just shook his head and stared straight ahead, not caring about the wet strands of hair that fell into his eyes. “It’s not that easy. I’m only turning eighteen next year. They will find a way to get me back. Besides…I could never leave Maya there.” He was silent again. Then he suddenly said, “You know, sometimes I think I should just go to Church Camp and have all of this over with, but then…” He broke off, hands clenched together in his lap. “I remember there was this guy, Richie, who used to go to our school and lived a few roads down the block. I don’t know if you know him. He was always kind of rumored to be gay and then one summer he went to Church Camp. A few weeks after he came back, he had a girlfriend.”

  I felt all the air being knocked out of my lungs when he turned his head and looked at me with wide eyes, suddenly looking young and helpless and scared.

  “I can’t do that, not after everything with Em and when I only just started to accept this part of me. I don’t ever want to live that lie again. I can’t.”

  “You won’t have to,” I said, trying to sound more certain than I felt. “We’ll find a way. I know we will.”

  Jules was silent, wrapping his arms around himself. After a long moment, he softly asked, “Can you drive me home?”

  “Of course,” I replied, slowly getting to my feet and walking over to my car.

  He got in beside me, completely soaked and with chattering teeth. I started the engine and turned the heating to its highest setting. Neither of us talked during the short ride home. Jules sat completely motionless, glazed eyes staring straight ahead. There was no way for me to tell what he was thinking about, and in the tense silence, I didn’t dare ask.

  Even though I doubted his parents were still up, I parked the car a good few feet away from the house. Jules looked out of the window without moving. Eventually, I could see him swallowing hard before he silently got out of the car.

  He went inside without turning around once.

  Chapter 31

  Jules

  The first few days after Amy’s party were the hardest. I didn’t eat much and slept even less, resulting in a constant feeling of fatigue and dizziness that made it hard for me to get out of bed. The days seemed to stretch endlessly, but everything that happened seemed to blur together somehow.

  It was all the same routine of school, work, and then coming home and locking myself in my room. The worst thing was that whenever it was quiet, and I was alone, the only thing I could think of was Hunter. The way he had kissed Victoria, the look in h
is eyes when he saw me in the doorway, and the way he kneeled on the wet pavement, shaking and unable to breathe.

  I knew that I had to at least try to forget about him, but I just couldn’t. He had made himself a home in the back of my head, and now it was impossible to get him out. Even more so when I kept seeing him around the school.

  I had skipped Biology this week, but that didn’t mean I could avoid running into him in the corridors or on the parking lot. The worst part about it was the look on his face, so terribly hopeful every time, I looked at him and then so devastated when I walked past him without more than a nod. It physically hurt, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to him, not yet.

  By now, two weeks had passed, and I still didn’t understand what I was feeling. I didn’t hate him like I had expected, and the initial disappointment had ebbed away. What I was left with was a bone-deep sense of missing him and something else I didn’t understand. All I knew was that it wouldn’t go away if I didn’t do something about it.

  ***

  A few days later, I woke up from my nightmare with a gasp, clutching at the sheets with shaking hands. Cold sweat was trickling down my neck and making my shirt stick to my skin.

  The sun was already peeking into the room, and over the sound of my ragged breathing, I could faintly hear my parents talking downstairs. A glance at my alarm clock confirmed that it was nearly time to get up anyway, so I swung my legs over the side of the bed and walked over to the bathroom.

  The nightmare was a familiar one. One I had used to have every night for a few months. I had been lucky to not have it for a while during the past year, but I wasn’t surprised that it had returned tonight. After all, I knew what day it was.

  By the time I got out of the shower, I was still feeling slightly shaky but at least somewhat refreshed. After I put on some comfortable clothes, I crept out of my room, trying not to make too much noise to avoid my parents’ attention.